The Wrong Carter (A Contract Marriage Romance)

MOIRA

“Morning, wife.”

I smile in my sleep, reaching my hand out until my fingers brush over something warm and solid. It’s hard, the ridges of muscle curving beneath the pads of my fingers as they dip through small tufts of hair, leading down past the navel.

Suddenly, I freeze, my hand hovering just before the waistband of a pair of briefs, my body turning cold.

Lucas isn’t this ripped. He’s softer, smoother, with absolutely no body hair to speak of. No marks. No scars marring his chest.

As if someone dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over me, I spring up in bed so fast my head nearly rolls from my shoulders. The room is bright, sending needles through my eye sockets, but I pry my eyes open, blinking rapidly, willing them to adjust on the man next to me.

Grant Carter.

The brother of the man I was supposed to marry yesterday, before he stood me up, of course.

The memories come back in fractured, agonizing snippets.

The day before, I was pacing the bridal suite like a caged animal. Maddie, my maid of honor, called Lucas over and over, her voice light as she reassured me. My mom insisted he was probably just stuck in traffic. Lucas’s mom acted as if nothing was amiss as she blotted her face in the mirror.

And then, finally, Grant, the man I didn’t even want to be a part of my wedding, came bearing bad news.

It was precisely what I feared: Lucas ran off. He said he couldn’t do it, that I wasn’t the one he was supposed to marry.

So just like him, I ran.

I grabbed my shit and ran out of the chapel, still in my ridiculous white dress, ripping off my heels and throwing them into the manicured bushes as blurred faces of guests watched in stunned confusion.

I practically dove into my car, fumbling with the keys, and before I could even put it in drive, the passenger door opened. Grant slid into the seat, tie undone, suit jacket long forgotten, sleeves rolled up to reveal two black-inked forearms. He settled into the space, somehow managing to look relaxed despite it all. His salt-and-peppered jaw was taut, and those silver, cold eyes met mine.

“What are you doing?” I asked him through the sobs tearing through me. I’m certain mascara was bleeding down my cheeks in thick, black rivers.

“Making sure you don’t do something monumentally stupid,” he grumbled, the slight Kiwi accent he’d picked up over the years spent overseas, playing professional rugby in New Zealand, bleeding into his words as he fastened his seat belt.

Suddenly, he reached across me, grabbed my seat belt, and fastened it, his face unnervingly close to mine. His gaze dropped to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back up to my eyes.

“So,” he asked, his voice low, “where are we going?”

“We?” I asked in a pathetic squeak. “We aren’t going anywh—”

“Either we go together right now,” he cut me off, “or your mother is going to pull you from this car, and you won’t be going anywhere at all.”

I peered back through the rear window to see my frantic mother stumbling down the chapel steps, her arms waving wildly like a distressed bird, her mouth open in a silent yell I couldn’t quite hear over the pounding in my ears.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Without a choice, I slammed the car into drive and sped off, the chapel shrinking in my rearview mirror.

“So?” Grant prompted after a few quiet beats. He sat back in the seat, parting his knees, his presence taking up every available inch of space. He looked ridiculously large in the confines of my car.

Lucas was tall too, and had good biceps, but whenever Grant was around, he seemed to cast everyone, including his own brother, into shadow. He was built from his many years playing rugby, and as one of the most notorious players, he was effortlessly charming when he wanted to be. He wasn’t afraid to take up space, to dominate a room, and he was annoyingly smug.

Throughout our relationship, Lucas always tried to force Grant and me to get along, pushing us together at family gatherings, but we were opposites. It was like trying to get a wary deer to befriend a predatory bear. It was never going to work.

And now, the bear was in my damn car.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said tightly, my voice still raw. “I also don’t know why you felt the need to chase me down.”

He shrugged, glancing out the window at the blur of passing scenery. “To help smooth over this whole embarrassment.”

I scoffed. “I’m so glad you view me as an embarrassment.”

“Not you,” he corrected smoothly. He glanced at me, his eyes devoid of any warmth. “Him.”

He licked his lips, his tongue sliding over white teeth that I’m sure are all fake, replacing the ones he’d had knocked out on the field.

“He never deserved you, anyway.”

The unexpected sincerity, or whatever that was, threw me.

“I knew he’d fuck up eventually. Just didn’t expect it to be on the wedding day.” Grant shifted, his hand sliding behind the headrest of my seat, his fingers brushing lightly against my hair, sending a shiver down my spine that I instantly resented. His gaze remained fixed on me. “So, where are we going?”

“Vegas is like, twenty miles away,” I mumbled, wiping the tears, which had mercifully slowed to a trickle, from under my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m going to get so fucked up I won’t even remember my name.”

“What the fuck!?”

The words explode from me as I jolt out of bed, my t-shirt (where did I even get this shirt?), and panties, suddenly feeling utterly insufficient. I desperately pull down the fabric, trying to hide myself from my fiancé’s brother.

Or ex-fiancé, rather.

The title tastes like bile. Tears tighten and burn my throat, but I swallow them down.

Grant sits up lazily beside me, a predator stretching, the blanket falling from his body to reveal more muscle, more dark hair dusting his chest and stomach, and a distinct V that dips below the waistband of his briefs. I rip my gaze away quickly before I can count every scar on his chest, heat crawling up my neck and flooding my cheeks.

Grant is ten years Lucas’s senior, so fifteen mine, with the same dark hair, but with graying edges at his temples. He is a man I have never been too fond of, always finding him arrogant, overbearing, and infuriatingly self-possessed. He’s ridiculously, obscenely wealthy, and America’s “hottest bachelor” after he retired from his rugby career and flew back to the States.

Every woman wanted him, and every man wanted to be him, according to every glossy magazine cover. I never understood the hype. He’s an asshole, and I hated him more each time I was around him.

And he was just lying in bed with me.

“Not usually the first thing a woman says when she wakes up next to me,” he says with that dreadful accent, a slow, shit-eating grin spreading that makes me want to scream.

I have half a mind to chuck the heavy bedside lamp at his fat head.

“Can you explain to me why we are in the same room, the same bed, and why you just called me your wife?” I hiss at him, my voice low.

Suddenly, red-hot horror burns through my blood.

“Did we...” I trail off, glancing down at my half-dressed state, at his, and the rumpled bed, the words lodging in my throat, too horrifying to voice.

“Have sex?” He finishes the sentence for me, his smirk widening, enjoying my discomfort.

But eventually, he shakes his head. “No. You were far too drunk for that.”

He pauses.

“However, you did snuggle with me all night like a bloody possum.”

I grimace at the image, the humiliation burning.

“What we did do was become man and wife at the chapel,” he says, his voice casual, as if discussing the weather, “with Elvis, of course.”

My body goes cold. The room seems to tilt. I stare at him for a long, frozen beat, my mind struggling to process his words, and he stares right back, his expression unreadable.

“We didn’t,” I whisper.

He lifts his left hand, showcasing a single, simple silver band on his ring finger. His lips pull into that familiar, irritating smirk, the one that always grated on my nerves.

“Oh, but we did, Mrs. Carter.”